Trying to figure out your “ideal body weight” is confusing at best and almost impossible at worst! When I was in school, it seemed like there was an ideal body weight equation for every day of the year, and we had to know all of them. Even when you condense them down to the dozen or so that are most often used, there are so many variables that none of them is 100 percent accurate even part of the time. Here at Smith County Memorial Hospital, I use an average of the five most widely respected ideal body weight equations. Using an average makes the result more widely applicable, but I still almost always have to make a qualifying statement to make the result apply to a specific individual in a meaningful way. The one factor most often responsible for throwing an ideal body weight calculation off is when an individual is overweight. For this reason, the ideal body weight calculation has given way to the body mass index calculation or BMI. BMI is a person’s weight in kilograms divided by the square of height in meters. The number you calculate will place you in the BMI spectrum ranging from underweight to normal, overweight and obese.
Underweight = less than 18.5
Normal weight = 18.5 – 24.9
Overweight = 25 – 29.9
Obesity = 30 – 35
Severe obesity = 35 and more
To calculate BMI for yourself, use a good online BMI calculator that will let you enter pounds and inches.
It’s easy to lose track of where you are with your weight if in 2020 you compare yourself with the general American population. I’ve spent over half of my career working outside of the United States, and every time a returned, the American population was heavier and heavier. It isn’t something you have to check statistics on. Just stand on a busy street corner in any American town or city and look around! The statistics are startling, though. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says that for the years 2017-18, the number of cases of obesity (BMI over 30) was 40.0% among younger adults aged 20–39, 44.8% among middle-aged adults aged 40–59, and 42.8% among older adults aged 60 and over. That’s crazy!
Sometimes when I compare myself to the general population, I can be fooled into thinking that I am doing fine with my weight when I am not. When that happens, it’s time for a reality check to get my head thinking correctly again.
In the Oct. 9 Healthy Eating Tip entitled “Strike preemptively if you have to,” I talk about the results of a 28-day diet reset where I lost 6 pounds. I started at 193.4 and ended at 187.4. I felt pretty good about myself at the end, and I still do. But let’s see where that puts my BMI. At 193.4 pounds for my height, I have a BMI of 27. That’s considered overweight. At 187.4 pounds, it only comes down to 26.1. That’s still considered overweight. My BMI drops into the normal range (24.9) at 178.8 pounds, and to get to a BMI of 22.3, which is comfortably in the normal range, I need to get down to 160 pounds again. That’s called a reality check!
I have some more work to do, and that’s why I am on yet another diet reset. I started on Nov. 1 at 194.4 pounds. In the Healthy Eating Tip I post on Jan. 1, 2021; I will review the results of this latest weight loss effort. Check back here then to see how I did!
Here is the reference for today’s Healthy Eating Tip:
U.S. Department of Health & Human Services. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. National Center for Health Statistics. https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/products/databriefs/db360.htm. (Accessed 11/25/2020.)